Live data from Hacker News

From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

reuters.com

131–140 of 150 posts

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#131
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the only way? It seems conceivable to me that you could have some sort of publicly run infrastructure that asserts your age is above some threshold without sharing your identity. So long as that system recorded no log of who asked it for assertions about whom then I can't see an objection to age verification.

> long as that system recorded no log of who asked it Two problems with this: 1. Any system which is anonymous becomes trivially abusable. A true anonymous system with no records kept means a single stolen or leaked ID could be used by everyone, defeating the system. You can try to search for and block leaked IDs but that doesn’t stop one kid from copying their 19 year old brother’s ID and using it to authorize the e…

For 1. Can't the attestation result function as an identifier that the service uniquely associates with an account?

For 2. I have sufficient trust in my society that this would be the case or would have significant negative ramifications for the parties involved. Probably not true for all countries.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#132
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Responsible parents aren't letting their kids slip out alone. Frankly, this is nonsense. European countries like Germany or Switzerland of France find it completely normal for their kids to walk to school without parents (at 6 or even 5 years old) or to play outside without parents. That is responsible parenting and good for kids themselves. The American idea that parents must not let kids out of their sight until…

It is nonsense. But thinking it's okay for kids to be able to go outside and do what they want, but oh no the internet is dangerous and we need IDs is even more ridiculous, quite frankly. If you don't want kids using social media, set up a network filter. But if you want to have mandatory ID for social media to "protect kids", but you have no trouble letting your kid go outside and get up to who knows what (they're a…

There are many laws regulating adults behavior outside. Outside is safer then online too.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#133
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economic reality is that none of the social media websites would pass the test without a significant hit to their profits. If you want to see the long-term economic projections of a social media website without the younger market see Facebook. It's like asking tobacco companies to reduce the toxicity and addiction of their products, inevitable collapse. The reality is that the business model itself is inherently…

Even when cigarettes were smoked by ~50% of the adult population, there were restrictions on sales to children. Why can we not accept the same for websites?

Because that's not the goal of this legislation. The point is to eradicate anonymity, so that people with wrong opinions can be made to go away.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#134
post #81
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a situation where the stated problem (protect children) is different to the actual problem (surveillance). Your proposal doesn't solve the actual problem.

Protecting children is a real problem, the internet right now is doing massive damage to everyone (not only children but for some reason we don't protect adults). Opportunists are seeing the opportunity to paperclip mass surveillance onto actual child protection efforts. We can fight this by supporting child protection mechanisms that don't act as mass surveillance, such as the one in California that merely reports w…

Protecting children is not a problem for the government's who are pushing this through. It is, however, a problem for parents. And for the children that are getting the raped.

It should be noted that it was not a major priority for government's to bring justice for the victims of the Epstein class or for the 250 thousand children that got sexually abused in the UK.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delusional Red Scare claptrap. Russia is obviously a geopolitical competitor, and exerts some influence, but its reach is limited by its smaller economy and cultural differences. The real threat is homegrown authoritarian looters who would spend the whole treasury into their pockets if they could, while constantly tightening the screws on dissent to keep the grift going. Fortunately you people are losing your grip on…

I'm sorry - did I trigger you? On one hand -- I read the opinion of one anonymous random on the internet posting a Russian-accented sneer, trotting out the usual Russian disinformation talking points, on one hand -- and the combined weight of decades of intelligence estimates of 50+ countries decrying the very real and serious hybrid warfare being waged by this out-of-control rogue state on the other. So who should I…

Lol. The best of the Western Russian-influenced (funded?) propagandists are people like George Galloway and Russians With Attitude, who despite their best efforts have relatively small and non-influential audiences. But keep that grift going, I’m sure they will continue paying you to drum up reports on the Slavic Menace while China (and we in the US!) eats your lunch.

(This is assuming you are some flavor of Anglo or Euro, based on the Russia fixation, and not one of the few dementia-addled boomers still on the US side of the Russia beat.)

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#136
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it what you want, but spoiling children with digital devices before they can even talk properly and then trying to forcing everyone to upload their ID to random server (which will sell/leak that) is definitely a parenting issue.

What causes it?

Sex.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same. I’m suggesting the site is required to transmit a category or rating and then end user devices have the option of filtering. The word “option” is a key difference. I don’t think we should be forcing everyone to go through these age checks or thinking we can actual ban under-16s or other age groups from sites. There’s no way to do this without forcing everyone through an ID process, which is where a lot…

But sites don't have categories, they almost all have mixed content. Twitter is social media, but is it also a porn site? Well that depends which account you're viewing. And whether your feed is a porn site can vary every single time you view it.

Then tag each , rather than each site. To make auditing easier, don't have websites as large as Twitter.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#138
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be fine if they were just using chat apps. It's not the communication that's the problem, or the bullying. That's going to happen regardless, and it's nothing new to online spaces. If anything, having online spaces available is helpful, because kids who are excluded at school are able to find places they fit in online. It's the algorithmic feeds and short-form video content. It's flooding their brains in their m…

I think being contacted by or contacting strangers is also a separate concern. Bullying is also a problem.

Strangers are fine. It's strangers in social contexts where strangers can do harm that's the problem. An unsupervised 8-year-old on Hacker News isn't going to get groomed; an 8-year-old on Snapchat might well be.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#139
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. A tech solution like this is unlikely to work since kids will be highly motivated to circumvent it and will likely be more tech savvy than their parents. 2. Leaving whether or not to allow social media use up to parental discretion creates a situation where some kids get permission to use social media and the rest use it anyways because of peer pressure. 3. If tackling the problem from the side of children and par…

1. You can't forge a cryptographic signature 2. Fine the parents

Fining parents because of the bad actions of a foreign tech company would generally fit the definition of "political suicide" for any government dumb enough to do it.
Post reply on HN